Business Traveller
by causeway-bay
Summary: Angela Bower meets her alter ego and tells us about it. Who would have thought most of us have known that person for quite a while, too! The story itself is a nearly present-day crossover of sorts.


(From Angela Bower's private notes, dated September 12, 2004.)

Somehow it all makes me think of Richard, who would say, with his distinctive British accent:_ "A breakfast meeting in London...a lunchtime meeting in New York."_ Yes. And a cup of coffee in Wisteria Lane.  
I had never met Lynette Scavo before I went down to Fairview a couple of weeks ago. Strictly business ? Kid yourself. In our days of mobile communication, eSignature, and my whole office inside the PowerBook G4 I'm generating these lines with, it takes very elaborately worked out excuses to classify a trip like mine to meet Lynette as "strictly business".  
Even more so with people like Tony Micelli, who work their way up the social ladder in an impressive manner, ah, but underneath they stay the same person all the time. Where are we going, I asked him when we were seriously considering marriage for the second time. He said _"All the way"_, and that was all I needed to hear.

And then the last rung on the ladder broke.

I've talked about this before, I know. I don't think I'm ever going to be able again to write down so much as my shopping list without at least a single line about him between what really matters, despite everything that happened. All I can do, I suppose, is to take it on by doing my very best and concurrently dismissing any feeling of guilt. So far, however, my best intentions to do so have led to a big amount of nothing. More than once have I felt my conscience speak up: _"Sorry to interrupt. But you were saying something about best intentions !"_ And every time that little voice inside my head will stress the words "best intentions" in a way which is obviously meant to make the whole thing sound distinctly skeptical.  
The underlying message, of course, is outright apodictical: You'll never make it. No matter how you intend to handle what happened, do not expect yourself to be relieved of the burden as a result. You may as well keep it on the inside instead of releasing the beast.  
Which is what disclosed secrets can become. And they die hard, Angela: Arcana publicata vilescunt, wrote the scholar, but oh so slowly. Time may be a healer, but until the beast lets go of you out of sheer decrepitude, it may already be too late for recovery.  
And yet. Here I stand, and I can do no other. I am in no way indifferent to possibly negative consequences this approach may have on me, but I am more willing to take the risk than let the beast live inside. I have fought quite a lot of fights in my life, and it doesn't really take a gargantuan amount of self-confidence to claim that I'm prepared for whatever may lie ahead. Bring it on, apocryphal fate.  
I'll not see fifty again, but what I presumably lack in juvenile energy I'm equipped to compensate with experience. Again, bring it on.  
Truth be told, I have little reason to worry, even less to complain. I realize that now, having fully digested my tête-à-tête with Lynette, a close encounter of the female kind. I've been doing business with Tom Scavo for the better part of two years now, and from what he had told me about his wife I expected many things, but none of my interpretations came close to the woman I eventually met.

It was like looking into a wondrous mirror.

* * *

(From Angela Bower's private notes, dated September 14, 2004)

Lynette is thirteen years my junior, so it might have been more appropriate to speak of our encounter as a journey back in time. When I was her present age, my life used to be called _"The Tony & Angela Show"_ – before it got canceled and replaced by _"Suddenly Angela"_.  
She lives in a really nice house down there, part of a highly usual suburban neighborhood: People mow their lawns, sit on the front porch, say hello when they meet. Lynette herself is member of a girls' club of five, and their friendship appears to be her most valued treasure.  
She talked a lot about this "housewives' circle", as she labeled it. I retained the impression that a club like hers and her friends' is a rather important feature in the life of an average suburban housewife and mother these days.  
I wouldn't know. Jonathan is heading for thirty as I speak, so I think I should be grateful to Lynette for updating me on twenty-first-century standards.  
Her kids are all little rascals right from the drawing-board. What are their names again ? Huey, Dewey, and Louie ? I think so, but I could be mistaken, anyway.  
Tom had always described his offspring as real-life angels, and how he finds it "too bad" not being able to spend more time with them still echoes in my mind, because it sounds suspiciously similar to what I myself heard many years ago from the man whose name I continue to wear like an old and battered but dearly loved coat. (You just cannot imagine your life without it anymore. In a very odd way, to be sure.)  
Lynette painted what I instantly felt was a more accurate picture of the family's situation: She's got all the work with the kids on her hands, while Mr Scavo is The Big Operator outside and The Best Of All Daddies inside their four walls – when he's in, which is for the weekend only most of the time.  
I told Lynette about the reasoning behind the decision I took when I was facing that same fork in the road of life so many years ago. And I told her about the price I had to pay for successfully strong-arming my husband: My family torn apart, my son growing up without his father, my love life focused, for the better part of fifteen years, on the man who was keeping my house in good shape.  
_"Fairy-tale stuff, isn't it ?"_, I closed.  
_"Would you trade places with me, Angela ? If only for a month ?"_, Lynette commented with a weak fake smile. She looked away briefly, then sipped at her coffee._"No, you wouldn't, sweetie. Not in a million years would you trade in your success in life for the desperations of a housewife and mother of four."_  
Including her baby, that is. I looked down. I knew she was right, of course, but I did not admit it.  
_"Still there are benefits."_, I argued. _"Would you trade in your husband's and your children's love for the bizarre SOPs of a female ad CEO, who's living single in a big house in near-NYC Connecticut ?"_  
Now it was her turn to look down. I continued, trying to omit more abbreviations.  
_"There is nobody to welcome me home when I open up the door...well, unless my mother is actually waitng for me, just to start all over again about how pathetic it is to bury one's real needs under a pile of work. Go find yourself a decent guy, before the gray in your heart connects with the gray in your hair. That's Mona..."_  
Lynette sniggered. Involuntarily, I suppose.  
_"Do you dye your hair ?"_, she asked, grinning.  
_"No. Those days are long gone. And my heart's not dying, either."_  
The two of us experienced a wonderful moment of alleviating laughter.

* * *

(From Angela Bower's private notes, dated September 15, 2004)

Are we both somehow feeling sorry about the choice we made at that point in life which proved to be of foremost importance ? She opted for family, now says she made a mistake by letting her husband talk her into this. _"Why didn't I have your strength when it was most needed ?"_, she said and then looked at me, looked me straight in the eyes. I shivered. You could be sitting on that side of the table, do you realize that, Angela...right here, right now. That's what I was thinking. As a Protestant, I should be familiar with the theory of Predestination, but then again I've never been a great believer. Maybe if Lynette, like me, had used her skills in one-upmanship at that critical point in life, she, unlike me, would've managed to avoid all the bizarre potholes that kept and continue to keep my life a bumpy ride. Maybe if I, like Lynette, had given in to Michael's demands (or Tony's rather later on), I, unlike her, would've found myself able to accept my decision and everything that inevitably goes with it. Children swarming my place instead of suits: It's just a matter of perspective.  
I think I should leave it at that. Scrutinizingly dissecting this line of thought would eventually prove to be an exercise in futility.  
I wouldn't want to live Lynette's life, yet there is something she owns that I will never have. And vice versa.  
The finality in this simple statement hurts.  
She might have continued to pursue a career ascending remarkably fast, hadn't she abandoned her way so abruptly. Me, on the other hand, if I hadn't called what I thought was Michael's bluff, I might have proved to be a talented housewife, after all. (Though I have reason to seriously doubt this bold statement. The legacy of Tony Micelli, sic est.) In the end both of us, in rather different ways, live for the taming of the wild, and the literates' favorite noun "recalcitrance" becomes more than an understatement if only half of the stories Lynette told me about her kids are true – which I don't doubt: I may not have been a classic mother, but there are some very unusual stories about Jonathan (not to forget Samantha), too. When I gave Lynette a taste of those, it inevitably led us to Michael and then to Tony.

But that's a different story which has its place elsewhere.

_"Travel further, work harder, see more clients."_ That's friend Richard's mantra. The first and only Commandment in his Bible Of Success. Works for him, obviously.  
So it does for me. So it would have done for Lynette. This I sincerely believe, and I told her so. This time her smile was neither weak nor fake.

If life was a game of golf, she would be looking for her ball in the rough at the moment, whereas I would be trying to get mine out of the bunker.

I think we're on our way to become friends. We'll see.  
It would be magnificent if we eventually met on the green, just to enter the clubhouse with even scorecards.


End file.
